


hold your breath, it gets better

by harklights



Series: saso 2016 fills [4]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Challenge: Sport Anime Shipping Olympics | SASO 2016, M/M, tanaka serenading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 10:36:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7570888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harklights/pseuds/harklights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But if there was one thing Ennoshita could trust about the world, it was that people wanted. They wanted things to bend to their will, other wills to bend to their will, odds to work in their favor, luck on their side, a shortcut, a fun time, insurance and assurance both. A security lock to be made extra sturdy against possible thefts. A frail book with tattered binding that wanted augmentation before it frayed and spilled its pages everywhere, succumbed to age. A girl’s pocket mirror that reflected falling cherry blossoms every time she opened it to look at herself. Vanity, maybe, although it had been too cute when she first saw herself and gasped.</p><p>“A flying carpet,” the man before the counter wishes.</p><p>“A… flying carpet,” Ennoshita slowly repeats.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold your breath, it gets better

**Author's Note:**

> *writes repeatedly on a chalkboard* i don’t have an ennotana problem, i don’t have an ennotana problem…
> 
> ennoshita is a small business enchanter who kinda flies under the radar even though his work is genuinely great. tanaka's pretty normal but also pretty amazing. this is probably.... the most straight up fluff i've ever written at the end there... enjoy!

As an enchanter, Ennoshita has run into his fair share of odd requests despite the ‘WILL NOT ENCHANT PEOPLE, BRAINWASHING IS ILLICIT’ sign he’d jokingly - and then worryingly, _seriously_ put up right by the counter in his shop to discourage the more far-fetched requests which pass through his shop’s door.

But if there was one thing Ennoshita could trust about the world, it was that people wanted. They wanted things to bend to their will, other wills to bend to their will, odds to work in their favor, luck on their side, a shortcut, a fun time, insurance and assurance both. A security lock to be made extra sturdy against possible thefts. A frail book with tattered binding that wanted augmentation before it frayed and spilled its pages everywhere, succumbed to age. A girl’s pocket mirror that reflected falling cherry blossoms every time she opened it to look at herself. Vanity, maybe, although it had been too cute when she first saw herself and gasped.

“A flying carpet,” the man before the counter wishes.

“A… flying carpet,” Ennoshita slowly repeats. He manages to sound professional instead of incredulous – an employee making sure he’s heard correctly rather than someone who has just listened to something ridiculous. It’s an accomplishment considering the grin that breaks out onto the other’s face, enthused and all too serious. Not a joke, then.

“Yeah, man. Magical. Like in that Disney movie? Aladdin?” 

“I’m familiar with it.”

“Great! So can you do somethin’ like that?”

Ennoshita stalls by taking a seat to ostensibly look at his schedule (rather free for commissions, as if he’d turn down the money) and mull over possibilities. At first impression it sounds pretty impossible. But maybe with the right steps he could produce some sort of favorable result, or at least not a total abomination, even if he knows nothing of rug making or weaving. It would be much easier to enchant a carpet while it was being made by a professional rather than modify an old one but… threads were threads, weren’t they? Fabric held onto spellery almost as well as metal did. 

Maybe not totally impossible. 

That was a start, if any.

“Maybe… I’ve not done anything like it before. Nothing about carpets are really meant to fly, and the heart of enchantment is the augmentation of already present strengths and purposes. Whatever happens, it definitely won’t be as… fantastical as what you’re thinking of. No flying through the clouds.”

The man frowns severely. “What, no Whole New World?”

“Um, no... My spellcraftmanship isn’t _that_ good. I could try referring you to someone who can-”

“No, dude, I was just joking. Trust me, I’ve already been around town for this. The first person I asked turned me down flat. Most enchanters don’t seem to, you know – they ain’t very up for trying to do the crazy sounding stuff, but you’re saying you’ll give it a go? That’s pretty cool of you.”

“Oh,” Ennoshita says, and fails to think of a better response other than, “Okay.”

The man jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “I have the rug in my car. I can go grab it if you need to take a look at it.”

“Thank you. Do you need help bringing it out?”

“Nope, I got it. It’s real small – you’ll see in a sec!” The man turns to leave, and after the doorbell jingles to signal his exit Ennoshita blows out a sigh and rounds the counter to lean against it and wait. True to his word, it doesn’t take long for the other to return with a rolled up rug propped on his shoulder, ducking and weaving to avoid the hanging mobile near the door.

Ennoshita pushes away from the counter. “If you could spread it out in the center aisle there, I’ll take a look at it.”

They get the rug neatly spread open. It’s rectangular, small enough to have been a decorative welcome mat, maybe; splashed with intricate patterns, and curling around the edges to show its age like a scarf just beginning to unravel. It even has four tassels on each corner, an odd addition that nearly makes Ennoshita smile. _Flying carpet, huh._

He kneels beside to rug, not too worried about another customer coming in during the slow crawl hours of a business day. The weaving is soft beneath his fingertips when he follows the curve of a loop, a swathe of light from the front windows brightening the colors. “Can you tell me anything about it? What it’s made of, how old it is –“

“- where it’s from, whether it’s been enchanted before. I gotcha. Like I said, I’ve been asking around.” The man takes out his phone and squints at it. “It’s a pretty standard dantsu rug ‘bout two generations old? Not exactly too sure about the age, just that it got passed down from my grandma. Forty years or something? 100% cotton, handwoven, made in Hyogo. Never had any enchantment done to it.”

“I can sense that. There’s rush grass on the bottom though,” Ennoshita points out, flipping a corner of the rug over to slide a hand over the sturdier material there. The stuff of tatami mats.

“Oh? Oh. Oops. So like, 90% cotton.”

“It’s not a problem. It helps that it’s all natural. Synthetic material is harder to work with.”

“Yeah?” The man asks, voice rising on a hopeful note. Ennoshita nods, then straightens up. The both of them kneeling at opposite corners of the rug.

“This is going to take a while. I need to do some research to see if anyone’s ever succeeded in crafting something like this before, so if you were expecting your flying carpet quickly I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. You didn’t need it for a specific occasion soon, did you?”

“Nah, there’s no rush.”

“Then consider this a consultation. I’ll keep your carpet here for a week or so, figure out if I can make an enchantment work. If I’m unable to find a way you can come back and I’ll refer you to another store free of charge. How does that sound?”

“Sweet. Sounds great. And if you do figure out how to make this baby float?”

“Then you’ll have it as soon as I can finish.”

The man cheers, startling Ennoshita, and rolls the rug up again to leave it propped behind the counter. He dusts his hands off and shuffles his feet while Ennoshita grabs a notepad and writes down the information that’s been given to him so far. 

_Cotton._ Good stuff. Common but relatively easy. Forgiving to work with. It’s the spellcraft that will be the doozy, not the canvas itself.

The fidgeting remains in the corner of his vision, so he eventually glances up. “May I have your name? And was there something else?”

“Tanaka Ryuunosuke. Uh… D’you think I can come over and watch while you do your thing?”

Ennoshita jots down one final note and slowly lowers his pen, trying not to give away his immediate distaste at the suggestion. “You mean, watch as I enchant?”

“Yeah, that.”

“It’s not typically something that I do with customers.”

“No exceptions?”

Ennoshita frowns and twirls the pen. Tanaka reads the hesitation for the rejection that it is, yet it only spurs on more determination.

“Aw, c’mon. It’s just that that rug’s real important to my family so I wanna be there and make sure it doesn’t go up in flames or something.” A pause; a sputter “N-Not that I think you’ll do that!”

“Of course not,” he retorts, unaffronted. At least not by that particular worry. The _request,_ though…

“So I won’t be a bother, yeah? I’ll stand quietly in the corner and leave whenever you want. You get fed up after ten minutes? I’m gone. I just wanna be there for at least a little of it?”

Ennoshita stays quiet, considering. Now that he’s seriously begun to think about this enchantment his eagerness to see what it could reap is too strong to back away now, not when he’s yet to explore anything. And what was one person peering over his shoulder? He’s survived schooling, training, and an apprenticeship. Eyes on the back of his head cause him no jitters anymore.

 _People wanted,_ Ennoshita remembers. _Insurance and assurance._

Just a small compromise won’t hurt anything. He’ll have to tolerate half an hour of Tanaka’s watching at most to be polite, or until the other realizes that enchantment isn’t bright and fantastic like magic and excuses himself all on his own.

Ennoshita sets his pen back to the paper. “In that case… Can you provide some contact information?”

 

*

 

The week passes to find Ennoshita steeped in too much research as he always is during a consultation. Despite how many times he does this he rarely receives commissions that he can spin out in just a day or two without looking up some technique or putting in a request for materials he doesn’t have in the backroom. There’s always something new that could be tried, something familiar to be improved upon, no two items the same and thus no two enchantments the same either, even if they all abide the same process.

The biggest woe of his craft – it often moves like molasses.

Fortunately, he makes progress. Unfortunately, the spellcraft involved is looking like it’ll be one of the most convoluted things to pull off. Just as he guessed it would.

He’s excited to try.

Tanaka drops by at the tail end of the business day and browses while Ennoshita wraps up with one last customer and tries not to feel dampened by the prospect of having an observer. Maybe it wouldn’t impede on anything – it’s not that Ennoshita has performance issues past his personal preferences, after all. It’s just that Tanaka, who seems the talkative sort, could very well keep on talking and prevent Ennoshita from reaching the level of productivity that he likes to maintain when working.

With a sigh, Ennoshita closes the register, gathers his resolve, and calls out, “Tanaka-san, can you flip the sign over on the door?”

“Got it!” Tanaka pops away from a shelf, and Ennoshita notices his outfit for the first time. Jeans, a t-shirt, a wide brim hat. All monochrome colors and surprisingly stylish. “Should I lock the door too?”

“If you would.”

Once done, Ennoshita gestures for Tanaka to follow him into the backroom, but the other hardly makes it two steps in before he releases a gasp. “Oh, what the-”

Ennoshita looks to him, and then he looks up.

“Ah. The werelights,” he explains, glancing at the little ball of light that’s caught Tanaka’s attention, glowing blue-purple against the wall without a sconce. “Not very common outside of some circles, I guess. It’s not my work either, but it saves my electricity bills. They’re safe, don’t worry.”

“Fucking cool,” Tanaka crows, taking in the purple-tinted hue cast about the space. “Kinda creepy.”

“Is that a compliment or not?”

Tanaka laughs and shrugs, reaching a finger out like he wants to poke one of the werelights. He draws away just before making contact.

Ennoshita’s enchantment table stands center stage in the middle of the room, old and dark wood. It’s an utter mess: open reference books and drafted glyphs everywhere, papers weighed down by semi-precious runes, a spectacle Ennoshita would usually hate to show to a paying customer at all and still feels reservations about even now, but when he glances back Tanaka is turning in a slow circle, looking more impressed than intrusive. He even moves to take a seat on the stool Ennoshita placed a ways away without having to be told to do so, and he doesn’t touch anything.

Well.

Work.

The rug is already hung up over a small beating rack beside the enchantment table. Ennoshita pulls over his chair, frees up the relevant notes from the snare of piled pipers, tugs the rigged magnifying glass over the spot he wants to start at, puts a needle between his teeth and feels a brief, absurd need to narrate what he’s doing while he’s doing it – _I’ve done some test runs with this and that and managed to achieve this and that; I enchant these threads separately and do this like so, building blocks_ – but he shakes the urge off and focuses on the task at hand. 

Laying down the first glyph correctly is important. It and everything that follows is irreversible.

He has to be careful not to tamper with the rug’s integrity too much. It’s old and clearly something of a family memento, so he takes his time, threads his needles, and feels the foundation of an enchantment coming to life on his fingertips, sparks which could catch and turn into something promising. There are snags to work around, frustrating dead ends where he has to stop completely, and indecipherable reference notes that he only notices he’s grumbling aloud over when a laugh jars him back to the present.

Tanaka slaps a hand over his mouth. “Whoops. Sorry.”

“I… forgot you were here.”

“You were that deep, huh?”

“It happens,” Ennoshita says, straightening with a wince. His back aches. Too often, he forgets to get up and stretch like he’s supposed to just as he forgets the passing time itself. His phone set to silent, just one midnight alarm ready to blare if he completely loses track of the night.

“That stuff you use looks like spider webs when it catches the light.”

Ennoshita bites his tongue at the observation and tries not to pontificate. He’s not in academia anymore, or with his small group of acquaintances who meet up every month like some arcane book club. He’s sating a small curiosity. 

“Gossamer,” he says. Capital G.

“Huh,” Tanaka hums. “Neat.” At some point his hat has come off. Ennoshita notices his hair for the first time too. There’s not much of it – a shaved head, features bared for what they are. Sharp eyebrows, high cheekbones, a straight nose and well-shaped eyes. A nice smile. 

With that, a dawning horror.

This man is attractive.

In perfectly good timing, Tanaka gets to his feet and stretches. “I’ll get out of your hair now then. It’s been a good while. Don’t you ever get disorientated bein’ in here, without windows?”

“That’s the point sometimes. There’s less distractions. I don’t know the time until I have to.”

“How Spartan.”

Ennoshita gets up as well, feeling the lapse of time now that it’s been brought up. One hour? Closer to two? It’s hard to judge by how much he’s managed to get done. His pace fluctuated a lot, bouncing between surety and note checking. Why hadn’t Tanaka left earlier? Even Ennoshita zones out watching stuff like this uninterrupted. 

“So does this mean you trust me with your rug now?”

“It’s not that I didn’t trust you before…” Tanaka grumbles. “I just wanted to see how it’s done. I guess I might’ve been too pushy about it. It’s awesome though, all of that.”

A thought strikes him, leaving Ennoshita’s mouth before he thinks to curb it. “Did you want to be an enchanter before?”

“Me?” Tanaka barks a laugh, too loud for the room. “No way, man. You’re lookin’ at zero aptitude right here. Nah, I just think it’s cool stuff. Thanks for letting me see. I won’t try an’ be a one person audience again though.”

Ennoshita nods. Thinks that he should start discussing rates and flat fees now that this commission seems somewhat plausible. He pulls his chair back to his enchantment table and sits, looking at all the mounds of papers. His concentration escapes him. He should really be more organized. There’s a rune touching a spool of Gossamer, glowing gently where they meet. Ice misting over a piece paper. He separates them but the ink beneath is already lost to smudging. Very professional.

He doesn’t guess that Tanaka must have taken his actions for a dismissal until he hears the door creak open and looks up. Tanaka’s standing there, dim in the werelight against the backdrop of the darkened storefront. He doesn’t pass immediately through, but adjusts his hat and spins around. “Hey… Did you eat anything? You came back here straight after work.”

Ah. That explains the foggy feeling.

“No. But I had lunch,” he adds, feeling his hunger and thirst begin to clamor. Small lunch. “I don’t bring liquids in here unless it’s an ingredient.”

Tanaka frowns. Like he’s concerned.

“There’s a place right around the corner,” Ennoshita assures. “Open late. They’re very familiar with me.”

“Good. Then you won’t mind if I pop by and pick up some food for you?”

“I’m…” Ennoshita starts, wrestling with Tanaka’s offering. That he’s offering at all. “More than capable of walking over. But thank you. That’s a considerate thing.”

“Dude, you’re zoning out.”

Well, no argument there. He can feel the truth of it in the lightness floating between his eyes.

“Okay. So just throw this onto your ‘random new customer bein’ pushy’ list, but I’m gonna pop around the corner and grab you some food. Real quick. No biggie.”

“No biggie,” Ennoshita repeats.

“For reals.”

_For reals._

“Sit tight. I mean, go grab some water and then sit tight. I’ll be right back. Okay?”

Ennoshita sits tight. That must be an adequate okay, because Tanaka’s whistling his way out the door a moment later. Jaunty, punctuated by the jingling bell.

Ennoshita rubs at his forehead. Sighs. Makes sure his work is essentially dog-eared for later before making his way out of the backroom, locking it behind him. Gropes for the water bottle he keeps beneath the counter and takes a seat there instead, drinking in small sips and watching the front windows. Black like mirrors after the sun sets. Belatedly, he realizes how dark it’s grown and flicks on a light. Just a small one. A little overhead chandelier, one of the first more complicated enchantments he crafted swinging gently in an unseen breeze. Candles that obey the flick of a switch like lightbulbs.

He’d thought himself so cool for that one.

“Wuh-oh.” The door chimes Tanaka’s re-entrance, the man ducking as if the chandelier will fall on him like some wayward horror scene. “That’s creepy as hell. Seein’ a trend here.” 

He comes over and places the food down. Ennoshita begs his stomach not to growl even as he feels it twist with neglect. When he opens up the bag to peer inside, he blinks with surprise.

“This… Is my usual order.”

“Oh yeah, I chatted up the cashier. Mentioned your name and she knew your order right away. Said you sometimes bought a coffee to go with it too, late like this, and I said ‘No way’.”

“Way,” Ennoshita says. “Way way.”

Tanaka slowly but pointedly nudges the takeout bag closer.

Point taken.

Ennoshita eats, feeling rude and awkward that Tanaka is standing and not eating at all on the other side of the counter. After a few minutes Tanaka turns away and Ennoshita thinks he’s finally leaving, but he simply goes to browse the shelves again.

Ennoshita watches, baffled.

 _Why_ was he still here?

“What’s this thingymabob?” Tanaka asks, raising something up which Ennoshita has to squint at to recognize in the dim lighting.

“A charm,” Ennoshita answers. “I’m not nearly as good at charming as I am at enchanting but they sell more and people don’t always expect to get the results they pay for, which works in favor of my lack of perfect expertise. Small business and all. Needs, must.”

“Look at you, workin’ the market. I thought charms were like, a fancy thing? Kinda sacred? Always at shrines and celebrations and stuff.”

“The best ones are. But then you have the stuff of gift shops too. I like to think I’m slightly above gift shop level.”

“Bet you are,” Tanaka remarks, casual but sure. As if he already knew.

Ennoshita dabs his fingers clean on a napkin. Why was he still here? Why was it so easy to talk to him?

“Do you mind if we discuss price later? I know that’s very unprofessional of me. This whole day has been a little unprofessional of me.”

“Dude, I don’t even care about the unprofessional thing. It looked like you were doin’ your job just fine to me.”

“I mean,” Ennoshita tries, gesturing to the food.

“That? No biggie, remember?” Ennoshita frowns. Tanaka sighs. “Look, take that meal out of your price tag for my flying carpet then.”

“Oh,” Ennoshita says. “Okay.”

“Wait. Not really though.”

“I will,” Ennoshita promises. “I’ll need the receipt though.”

Tanaka stares at him for a moment longer than polite, and then laughs. Again too loud for the room. Intrusive; disarming. Showing a lot of teeth. He’s so uncontained. But he takes out his wallet and hands a crumpled receipt over anyway, grinning. “Done deal?”

“Done deal.”

“Now I really will get outta your hair then,” Tanaka concludes, taking several steps backwards without turning around. “Get some proper sleep!”

“Mhm,” Ennoshita hums, watching, because lying through his teeth to a customer, even in a matter not directly related to an exchange of goods or services, is poor manners.

Tanaka snorts like he heard the truth. Turns, chimes the door, and is gone.

*

Absurdly, but perhaps not wholly unsurprising, that first evening isn’t the last one that they spend together.

Tanaka is absent for the rest of the week, but then he comes over to hammer out pricing. They talk business, Ennoshita laying out how time figures into cost because some people in the world don’t respect the cost of labor when it’s in the form of art, but Tanaka doesn’t gripe about it even though he tilts his head skyward and fake cries by the time the sum is tentatively settled and laid out before him. He seems impressed by Ennoshita’s flexibility.

Tanaka seems impressed by a lot of the things that Ennoshita does.

Ennoshita isn’t very used to being marveled at. Doesn’t really _get it,_ if he’s telling the truth. But Tanaka doesn’t put on airs or fake amazement. He’s honest and genuine, rowdy, galvanizing. And attractive.

No, Ennoshita’s mind won’t let him forget that detail.

*

There are impromptu visits. More caretaking meals, Tanaka clicking his tongue every time Ennoshita opens his palm for the receipt and adds it to the rest.

Ennoshita even lets him into the backroom again. Just once, because this time Ennoshita’s awareness of Tanaka sitting quietly there on a stool in the corner doesn’t fade away into intensive focus on his spellcraftmanship. Just when he comes close to pure concentration, Ennoshita will remember his guest and then feel or imagine Tanaka watching him or his hands or the room that’s so personal to him - or a mix of all of the above. Ennoshita then goes on to prick his finger once on his needle and gets a floaty feeling in his hand ten minutes later, which at least means that the buoyancy in his enchantment is working properly, but does not bode well for his overall productivity.

No. The backroom is his oasis. The storefront a more acceptable meeting place.

Tanaka talks about his friends and family first and foremost. Not always without complaint, but always with care and respect and fiery loyalty. He has his fair share of ridiculous stories featuring people who sound like characters for how brightly he paints them. His mother, his older sister. Always just the three of them for as long as it really mattered. But an aunt and grandmother too. _So many strong ass women. Yeah, I suffered a lot._

Nishinoya, commonly known as ‘Noya-san’, worshipfully known as ‘The Guardian Diety.’ Capital T-G-D.

Yamamoto and his little sister Akane. Hinata and Kageyama. Some pair, those two. Kiyoko-san. Yachi.

(“Yachi?” Ennoshita exclaims. “You know her?” “She’s… Well, she’s a witch. The one who made my werelights?” A silence, Tanaka gaping. “No shit. Wouldn’t’ve guessed it. Small fucking world.”)

It’s these sorts of conversations more than anything else that has Ennoshita’s mind wandering late at night or early in the morning after he’s let himself into the backroom again instead of into bed.

 _Attractive_ is the first one, still there in every tossed smile and raucous laugh. His slim waist. The fitness suggested beneath his clothes.

But greater than that, encapsulating it all, two words nearly embarrassing in their simplicity: _Good man._

*

Not days, not weeks, but nearly two months later does Ennoshita finish Tanaka’s commission, grasping for the finishing line like a runner at the end of a marathon. Accomplished and utterly done. Muscles aching. His fingers especially.

_Thank god._

Against all the professionalism which Ennoshita has continuously tried and failed to maintain around the other man, Tanaka doesn’t come to receive his flying carpet during business hours, but after them.

He breezes in and swings the sign from OPEN to CLOSED, then approaches the counter with a pep in his step and seeking eyes as if expecting a gift puppy to come plodding out into his arms.

“It’s in the back,” Ennoshita laughs.

“Lead the way. I am so hype for this.”

“I can tell,” Ennoshita says, opening the backroom. Only the third time that Tanaka has been back here, the lights low and blue-purple as usual.

Ennoshita doesn’t know how to draw the reveal out, so he simply steps aside to let Tanaka see his rug.

“Oh my god,” Tanaka whispers, softer than ever. It doesn’t last very long. “Oh my god, Ennoshita-san! Holy shit! It’s in the air!”

“It’s a flying carpet,” Ennoshita points out, amused at Tanaka’s astonishment at receiving exactly what he paid for. “Well, a hovering one. But it will move once you learn how to ride it.”

“Holy shit,” Tanaka repeats, stepping one reverent foot up onto the rug. “Fucking beautiful. I can’t believe it. I know I’ve seen you work on this thing but, you know, I can’t believe this right now!”

Feeling that half self-satisfied, half validation seeking side of an artist, Ennoshita asks, “Is it to your satisfaction?”

“Shit, is it? I could kiss you right now.”

Ignore that swoop in your stomach. Just laugh. “Ha ha,” Ennoshita says woodenly.

Tanaka’s too marveled to notice the poor acting. He has both feet planted firmly on the rug now, coasting back and forth like a beginner slipping on a snowboard. Grinning like mad. The rug’s four tassels dangling charmingly.

He looks up, catching Ennoshita’s eyes.

“Have you tried this baby out yet?”

“Of course.”

“For fun, I mean.”

“No. I’ve only made sure that it would as it should and will keep on working for as long as possible. It’s yours, after all.”

“Well I say come on up and join me. This is _awesome._ You’re fucking amazing, man. Two months and this?”

“No,” he gasps around the praise, raising a hand in refusal.

“C’mon.”

“Oh. No, no.”

“Please?” Tanaka tries. It shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t. He’s still smiling, completely unrepentant.

“How would we even… Begin to… I didn’t enchant this with the combined weight of two people in mind. Perhaps two children. Us? There’s no guarantee that it will lift off the ground anymore. It’s better to err on the side of caution with these things. It would need another layer of… of something. The rush grass took surprisingly well to buoyancy, more so than the cotton. I think that really saved the entire enchantment. We’ve been talking about it in our circle now. I guess grasses really like to fly on the wind too.”

“Hey,” Tanaka says, easy, but there’s a tinge of pink in his ears as he offers a hand. Palm up. Ennoshita knows he was beginning to ramble. “I got a thing to show you.”

 _‘What’_ Ennoshita mouths, breathless. Tanaka simply wiggles his fingers until Ennoshita grasps them, and then he’s stepping up onto the rug too. 

There is no unbalancing. The rug doesn’t wobble or buckle or even descend closer to the ground, remaining faithfully steady. It’s just Tanaka, guiding him gently closer, the two of them standing face to face. Good god. His heart is racing. A mixture of success and proximity beating his blood.

Tanaka clears his throat. Ennoshita remembers the thing he’s to be shown and tries to pay attention. Hopefully it’s not Tanaka’s eyes, because he’s certainly noticing them now.

“So, tell me,” Tanaka starts. “When did you last let your heart decide?”

“What?” Ennoshita breathes again, managing to get some volume behind the word this time.

“I can open your eyes. Take you wonder by wonder.” - Ennoshita freezes, open-mouthed. _No._ And then. _He sounds good._ Turning more sing-song on the first wonder yet holding the notes just fine. Oh, god no. – “Over, sideways, and under on a magic carpet ride.”

Tanaka inhales.

The rug begins to rise up.

“A WHOLE NEW-”

“Not in here, not in here!” Ennoshita yells, aghast at all the potential damage as the rug seems to want to obey Tanaka’s mood and fly.

“Outside then!” Tanaka laughs, ebullient and way too loud. “There’s a park right over on-”

“Not in _public,”_ Ennoshita insists, because he’s still mentally bracing against Tanaka’s _everything_ and that’s what his mind leads him to. The two of them pressed close together. Outside. In public. Riding a flying carpet. Tanaka trying to pop an incredulous wheelie off the façade of a building, people gasping and pointing below.

“My place then?” Tanaka suggests, suddenly quieter. He’s holding both of Ennoshita’s hands in both of his. Ennoshita isn’t sure when that happened but he doesn’t want to pull away, and when Tanaka’s grip momentarily tightens in entreaty, his face certainly blushed pink now, open and eager, Ennoshita fervently doesn’t want the contact to stop.

The question still begs off his tongue though, the one that’s been burning there since the very beginning. “Why?”

“Ma’ll wanna thank the person who made her little girl dreams come true and gave her a flying carpet,” Tanaka rushes. All for his mother, this whole thing. _Good man._ But then Tanaka continues, like he’s been waiting for it. “Thought you looked good from the first moment I saw you. Watchin’ you work was like… Shit, I don’t know. Like watching anyone do what they really love doin’. Couldn’t stop looking.”

“That’s it? That’s anyone.”

“And then I got to know _you.”_ Tanaka smirks. “Check yourself in a mirror sometime too, maybe.”

Ennoshita exhales a disbelieving laugh, shakes his head, gathers up courage. Thinks with resolve, _Not my client anymore._

“You first,” he says.

Not the best attempt at flirtation by a long shot, but that smirk softens into a smile, both expressions unfair and heart hammering. _“A fantastic point of view,”_ Tanaka mutters agreeably.

Ennoshita groans and reclaims his hands to stick his face into his palms and then tuck all of that against Tanaka’s shoulder. He leans there, reeling and bemused when Tanaka puts his arms around him with a laugh and then a sigh.

“Fuckin’ pinch me right now though.”

Digging through his memories, Ennoshita decides to do one better and dusts off old, fantastic words.

_“Or say we’re only dreaming.”_

Tanaka hears despite the muffle and gives a delighted, too hard squeeze. “There you go! God, what a perfect one!”

That he could be referring to the lyric or he could be referring to Ennoshita isn’t lost on him. And for once that pressing _Why?_ isn’t clamoring in the back of his throat.

He thinks he has his answer right here.


End file.
